Friday, May 25, 2012

I've had about 9,000 things going on lately and the Daily Apple has had to take a back seat. Now I'm about to leave for the long Memorial Day weekend, so I won't be here to post my usual Sunday entry once again.

The other day I was out walking in the woods, which I haven't done in a while, and I noticed how much some of the plants had grown since the last time I'd been there. That reminded me of time lapse videos I've seen of plants growing, taking over things at what seems like lightning speed. I thought that might be a good metaphor for what seems to have been happening with the Daily Apple lately -- while I'm away, you can watch the plants grow!

How long do you think it would take for the plants to take over and erase that two-track path?(Photo from Sustainability Campaign)

Of course it wouldn't be the Daily Apple if I didn't provide some informative facts for you. So I'll start with David Attenborough, who explains a bit how vine-like plants grow the way they do:

The rotation-like movement of the vines is one kind of plant movement called nutation. Nutation means the plant is moving but not in response to stimuli, like changes in sunlight. Nutation is movement the plants do on their own. In this case, the vines do that rotating thing, it is thought, in order to bump into a sturdy enough support on which to grow.

Other plants do the nutation dance, but they're not seeking some surface to bump into and grow around. Instead, the nutation happens as a result of changes in cell and tissue growth. That is, some sides of the plant grow faster than others, or one side has more leaves than another, so one side of the plant weighs more and thus it bends in that direction. Then the other side grows more and it bends in that direction.

Here are some pepper plants growing and doing the nutation dance. The person who made the video isn't entirely sure why the plants on the right are growing faster. One side is Jalapeno peppers and the other side is Cubanelles, so that may account for the difference, or he said he may have planted the ones on the right a day earlier:

Plants do, of course, move in response to changes in their environment. The environmentally-caused response we know best is when they move to try to get to more sunlight. The big word for this is phototropism.

Here's a time lapse video showing phototropism, made by third-grader Cameron Wright. No, it's good! He tells you at the end how he made the video. And Cameron himself makes an appearance!

There's also simply plants' growth. They will grow and develop differently depending on how much sunlight is present. The more sunlight, the more they leaf out and the greener the leaves get in order to gear up for photosynthesis.

If plants are grown in the shade or even in the dark, their energy goes into making the stems longer -- presumably to help the plant grow to a place where there is more light -- and they keep their leaves suppressed The eleven-dollar word for this variation in growth depending on the amount of sunlight is photomorphogenesis.

Now that you've got a few facts under your belt, let's see some more of the sped-up growth of all sorts of plants.

Here's more of David Attenborough, attributing all sorts of nefarious anthropomorphic intent to the plants:

I wanted to find some fancy word and description of how flowers bloom, but all I found was "the most extreme changes in cell and tissue expansion usually occurs in the petals of flowers" and "much remains to be understood."

Some physicists did discover that the shape a flower takes is dependent on what the cells are doing throughout the petals. Lots of growth happens at one part of the petal, and parts of the petal elsewhere curl up. It's another kind of nutation, I suppose.

Blooming happens when a ton of growth happens at the very tip of the petal until the petals have no place else to go and they pop open.

The physicists said that the entire process of growth to blooming of a blossom is based around "instabilities." More stuff is happening in one place than in another, so the plant moves or changes in response to that imbalance.

Beyond this, though, the physicists said there's a ton they still don't understand. Everyone agrees, the process by which a flower blooms is complex. And pretty remarkable, how plants make these spectacular, colorful, fragrant blossoms.

In this one, the rose fascinates me, how many changes it goes through:

Here's a day in the life of some tulips. They bloom and then as the light fades, they close up again slightly (phototropism!):

Now, I know that fungi are a whole different kettle of . . . spores, but I think this one is pretty cool. These are blue oyster mushrooms:

It seems natural to provide you with some instructions on how to make your own time-lapse video of plants growing. But it seems to be a pretty involved process, with all sorts of variables depending on what kind of equipment you have. So I'll recommend a few resources that seem to be good:

Monday, May 14, 2012

I have a new pair of shoes that are black, slip-on, with fabric uppers and soft soles. They're very comfortable and quiet when I walk around in them, so I've taken to thinking of them as my ninja shoes. I've said such phrases to myself as, "Where are my ninja shoes?" and "I'll wear my ninja shoes today," often enough that I started to think about ninjas.

There are of course all the very fun but exaggerated depictions of ninjas as stealthy, black-clothed, face-masked, sword-carrying fighters who drop in, slice an enemy to ribbons, and vanish immediately. It's all very mythical and tall-tale. But those depictions must have come from somewhere. Were there real ninjas once upon a time? Were they anything like the way we think of them today?

Ninjas as we think of them today: black-suited, faceless, armed with throwing stars, and so full of secret mysterious powers, they're not really real. Except to be really awesome!(Image from Alt World)

Yes, ninjas really did exist. But the information we have about them is sketchy because (a) it was a long time ago and (b) they were secretive by design, so they didn't exactly keep a whole lot of records about themselves.

As a result, there is quite a bit of disagreement and uncertainty about what was actually true about ninjas back in the day. So what follows represents people's best guesses today about ninja history.

History

Ninjas were hired spies or assassins in Japan between the 11th and 16th centuries. So while Europe was having its monks and Middle Ages, Japan was having its ninjas and samurai.

They were kind of always outsiders from the get-go. The story goes that as dynasties were falling in China and rulers and monks were fleeing from China into Japan, they brought their fighting tactics with them.

In the meantime, Japan was controlled by a ruling class of warriors who followed strict codes of fighting. In a battle, a samurai would select a single opponent to challenge, recite his family lineage, and then attack. Samurai wore armor and bright colors and were very much full of family pride and loyalty.

Samurai warriors in their armor. I bet they made a lot of clanking and banging when they walked around. What does the Wizard of Oz call the Tin Man? You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caligenous junk! That's probably what ninjas thought of samurais.(Photo from Music Lovers)

Some of the people whom the samurai had defeated were pretty ticked off at them. They wanted to fight and defeat the samurai, but they needed help. So they turned to the ninjas.

Ninjas (shinobi or shonobi) had become a group living in the mountainous Iga province and in a smaller area called Koga, in the southern part of the Omi province.

The box in red shows the Iga province and part of the Omi province where the Ninjas lived.(Map from Iga & Koga)

Nobody is really sure who the first ninja was or how there came to be enough of them that they formed a community -- two communities actually -- except that it didn't take long before ninja parents were teaching their children how to be ninjas too. The techniques they used to fight have been traced back to China (and before that, India), so it seems that the Chinese monks trained various villagers and farmers in the ninjas' art of ninjutsu.

Ninjutsu is, like karate or tae kwan do, the name of a fighting technique which encompasses methods and skills for fighting, as well as all sorts of philosophies about enemies and allies and ways of living and so on. Ninjutsu is still taught and practiced around the world today. I'll get into the details of ninjutsu in a bit, but the short version is that it's about being stealthy, blending into the background, and doing the unexpected.

So some samurais hired some ninjas to be spies and assassins on their behalf. With the ninjas' help, the samurais could employ all sorts of shady techniques without ever doing such dirty work themselves. The ninjas were very effective, so the samurai boss would win the fight thanks to the work of the ninjas.

After witnessing the prowess of the ninjas, other samurais hired ninjas to fight their battles, and back and forth and so on. This went on for years. Decades. Centuries, even, through all sorts of wars and political upheavals and changes in emperors.

Ishikawa Goemon is a cult hero, thanks to Kabuki plays and more current anime tales. Some people say he was a ninja. Others say he was simply an ex-samurai turned thief with a band of robbers who stole from the rich and wound up getting boiled to death.(Image from Iga & Koga)

Through all of that, even though the ninjas were hired by the rich guys, the ninjas retained their status as lower class common people, and as outsiders. While a few ninjas came to be known for their abilities, for the most part, they remained largely not-famous. Since they would fight for any side, and so potently, in time, the samurai and the warlords came to fear the ninjas as much as they were helped by them.

Hattori Hanzo is another figure who is said to have been a ninja. Actually, he was born a samurai, and he enlisted the help of ninjas from the Iga province. His legacy today is that he became a master ninja, but that's probably myth-making after the fact.(Image from Wikipedia)

Finally, after a prolonged civil war in Japan, in the late 1500s a warlord who sought to unify the country saw the ninjas as a threat to that unity and stability. He attacked them openly at their stronghold at Iga. Fighting out in the open in one huge group was not the ninjas' strong suit, and they were routed. Some survivors stayed in the service of the warlords, but others fled to the mountains where they continued to practice and teach ninjutsu, though in far smaller numbers.

Ninjas pretty much faded out of the historical picture, but they never left the memories and imaginations of many Japanese. So their mystique has persisted into our culture today.

How They Fought

The details get especially fuzzy here because, in addition to all the other reasons why ninja history is unclear, ninjutsu is still practiced. There is a lot of disagreement over whether certain techniques or implements were really used back then, or if x and y are things that have been added since.

For sure, ninjas were trained to move and walk quietly and without being observed. They used secret codes and aliases. They did not want to reveal themselves when they were on a mission, or at any other time if they could help it.

So they wore, not black suits with masks which would have made them very conspicuous (that's actually a costume from Kabuki theater), but rather the clothes like the peasants they moved among. If they were to be operating at night, they wore dark blue, not black. Sometimes they posed as Buddhist priests, or flute players whose flutes held poisoned darts, or -- I kid you not, one site says this -- candy salesmen.

A few ninjas were women. Sources disagree about how common it was for women to be ninjas, but there were female ninjas.

Sidenote: Ninjutsu classes for women are now huge in Iran.It's estimated there are some 3,500 women trained in ninjutsu. Some people interpret this to mean that Iran's government now has all these potential female spies they can put to use. To me, it looks like this is a rare opportunity for women in Iran to feel like they have some power and control in their life.

Women in Iran studying Ninjutsu say they like it for the way it balances body and mind, strength and agility.(Photo from the Daily Mail)

OK, back to the history.

The ninja's primary emphasis was on infiltrating enemy territory. Most often they did this to gain information, to understand who and what they would be facing, and then from their position inside the castle or stronghold, to let in more warriors who would attack. Occasionally their purpose would be to assassinate a particular leader.

So the principles of ninjutsu emphasized how to be really good at sneaking around enemy places without being noticed. There are various walking techniques which train you to move silently through leaves or shadowed areas or over wooden planks.

They were instructed not to eat garlic or beans so they could not be detected by smell.

They knew how to pick locks, climb trees and walls, and subsist on little food even though they traveled long distances.

Ninjutsu also identified five weaknesses (laziness, anger, fear, sympathy, and vanity) and five needs (security, sex, wealth, pride, and pleasure). Practitioners were taught to spot these in others so that they could exploit such weaknesses or needs for their own purposes.

Finally, of course, ninjutsu covered various methods of combat, armed and unarmed, including several "striking techniques."

Ninjutsu includes training in the art of using pressure points to weaken and gain control over an enemy very quickly. A fierce nipple pinch -- seriously! -- can put a person at your mercy.

There's a lot of dispute over what weapons they used. The most famous weapon, the throwing star, some people say they only tossed as a distraction, like in the movies where a cowboy throws a rock in one direction to get his enemy to shoot at it and reveal his position.

An array of ninja weapons. Some say this many weapons is a more recent attribution. Others say ninjas did use some weapons like these, but mainly for distraction or catching the enemy off-guard. Since most of these are small and easily concealed, and since concealment is practically a ninja's middle name, I'm guessing they did use weapons like these.(Image from Only HD Wallpapers)

Ninjas also used poisons and smoke. There's some dispute about whether the smoke was used in combination with poison -- like tear gas, for example -- or if the smoke was used for disguise, to cloak the ninja's departure so that enemies could not follow. But for sure ninjas did use smoke.

Smoke was one of the ninja's tools. But whether it was used as a disguise as shown here is up for debate.(Photo from The Art of Ninjutsu)

Where they could, they even built structures to snare the enemy. There are diagrams from their original manuscripts showing trap doors, passageways that led to dead ends where an enemy could be quietly offed, and even a covered pit whose floor is riddled with spikes.

One of the rules of ninjutsu was, essentially, don't be a slave to the rules. They taught, if it's practical, do it. If your senses are telling you one thing and the rules say another, don't be an idiot, follow your senses.

OK, now that I've given you the historical facts, I can't resist. I have to share with you some of the ninja lore that's out there.

Ninjas can kill anyone they want! Ninjas cut off heads ALL the time and don't even think twice about it. These guys are so crazy and awesome that they flip out ALL the time. I heard that there was this ninja who was eating at a diner. And when some dude dropped a spoon the ninja killed the whole town.

A room full of ninjas. hint: one is hiding behind the wallpaper. Four are hiding behind the desks. One hypnotized you to not see him. Three are hiding behind the camera. One is dressed as a teacher who is also a ninja so you can't find her. At least six are hanging outside the window.

There is also a long-standing debate raging online about who would win, ninjas or pirates. Since ninjas invented the internet, this is pretty much a no-brainer. Obviously the whole thing was created by ninjas only to show their dominance over the weak one-eyed pirates. Duh.

In 2009, about 1.5 billion gallons of ice cream were made. Billion. That includes hard and soft serve.

Among those billion and a half gallons, the favorite flavors are, in order:

Vanilla (27.8%)

Chocolate (14.3%)

Strawberry (3.3%)

Chocolate chip (3.3%)

Butter pecan (2.8%)

Vanilla has been the champion flavor since maybe forever.Diving into a good vanilla can be pretty luxurious.(Photo from in love godiz world)

Chocolate is moving up on vanilla, though. In 2008, only about 10% of ice cream purchases were chocolate, so it moved up 4% in one year.

My favorite flavor, by the way, is chocolate almond. Of basic grocery-store ice creams, that is. Of Ben & Jerry's flavors, it's a close call between New York Super Fudge Chunk and S'mores. I won't get into my favorites of all the other varieties out there.

Ben & Jerry's S'mores has chocolate ice cream, chunks of fudge, gobs of toasted marshmallow, with a graham cracker swirl. I choose it first for the chocolate, but it's that graham cracker swirl that keeps me eating it.(Photo from Polyvore)

Ice Cream Ingredients

Ice cream is made of some pretty basic stuff:

whole milk

heavy cream

sugar

egg yolks

salt

flavoring

How much of each ingredient you put in is where the artistry
comes in. Plus, of course, whatever flavoring or extras you might add.
Such as peanut butter cups. Or pecans. Or chopped strawberries. Etc.

Every once in a while, I like a good strawberry ice cream. With actual strawberries. Yum.(Photo and recipe from Singapore Local Favorites)

Ice Cream vs. Other Frozen Desserts

So, what's the difference between ice cream and frozen yogurt, and frozen custard, and sherbet, and all the rest? The difference comes down to the amount of milkfat in the dessert.

But what's milkfat?

To get very basic about it, milk is comprised of three things:

water (most cow's milk is about 87% water)

fat globules, called milkfat

solids that aren't fat, or non-fat solids

Milkfat globules are solid at room temperature. Homogenization breaks down the globules so that they're all more or less the same size and therefore easier to digest.

Whole milk has at least 3.25% milkfat. Keep that in mind as a point of reference for the percentages that follow.

Ice cream: minimum 10% milkfat. This is regulated by the FDA. To be able to call your product "ice cream," it must have 10% milkfat. Gourmet ice creams often have more than 10%, sometimes as much as 14%.

Custard: same amount of milkfat as ice cream, but more egg yolks. In our basic ice cream recipe, we would use 6 egg yolks to yield 2 pints of ice cream. In a basic custard recipe, you would need 20 egg yolks to yield 2 pints of custard.

Some time in the 16th century, Marco Polo's sherbet recipe evolved
into something very like our ice cream today. There's a lot of dispute
about just where in Europe "Cream Ice" first appeared -- was it at
Catherine de Medici's table in 1553 after she became the wife of Henry
II in France? Since Marco Polo was Italian and so was Catherine de Medici, does Italy claim the birthright? But since she ate it in France, does France get the glory? Or did ice cream also appear on some dignitary's table in England?

Catherine de Medici. I really have to learn more about her. Especially since she liked ice cream.(Image from the History Channel)

While we're not sure royal person in which European country ate it first, ice cream was made
available to the general public in 1660 when a Sicilian offered a dish
that mixed milk, cream, butter, and eggs at his cafe -- the first one
in Paris.

Ice cream was a very rare treat due to that whole frozen business until the invention of ice houses in 1800, which could store and keep ice. (Fans of Little House on the Prairie will remember when Nancy tricked Willie Oleson into locking a girl in the ice house, which could have killed the girl.)

But it wasn't until after WWII when refrigeration became
widely available that people all across the country could enjoy ice cream on
a regular basis.

This is the hard part of making ice cream: it has to be frozen and whipped to put air into it -- simultaneously. This process is what keeps a lot of people from making their own ice cream, except on rare occasions. Here the Waltons are hand-cranking it in their ice cream barrel.(Still from DelsJourney)

After all those serious historical figures and whatnot, I thought it was time for a banana split.(Photo from the Tropical Ice Cream Cafe)

Finally, it would be a crime not to mention Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, which is increasingly recognized as some of the best ice cream available today. You can order it online or buy it in more and more stores these days, or you can get her recipe book and make it yourself: Of her flavors, I'm not sure whether the Brambleberry Crisp is my favorite, or the Riesling Poached Pear sorbet. Yes, it's a sorbet, but it's that good.

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In compliance with an FTC rule, I'm letting you know that I don't get any free products or swag from any advertisers. Occasionally I'll insert links to products available for purchase from Amazon. In the 9 years I've been doing this blog, I have made a grand total of $21 from people clicking on those links and every once in a great while purchasing something from Amazon. That's it.